Minecraft 1.14 reveal: Village And Pillage

Minecraft 1.14 – Village And Pillage (Mojang)

Today’s MINECON Earth streaming event pulled back the curtain on what we can expect form the next version of the game – 1.14. You can expect 1.14 to be released in early 2019. Jeb and Agnes ran through the following new features that will be coming in this version of Minecraft:

* The update will be named Village And Pillage and focus on, you guessed it, revamping the Village component of the game. Jeb joked that it had been seven years since the last major changes to Villages, so it was about time.

* As part of the update, Village architecture will be radically updated. Each Biome will feature unique Village designs based on materials available in the specific Biome. Moreover the Village structures will be influenced by the climate of the Biome; rain free Dessert’s for example, will feature structures with flat roofs.

* The inhabitants of Villages will be getting updated as well. Each Village will now feature Villagers with skins unique to their Biome and profession. Villagers will also become more intelligent too, gaining additional mechanics such as following a schedule based on their work/profession.

* Trading with Villagers will be updated, but no detail was given on exactly how.

* It doesn’t appear there will be any new actual new Villager variants, just simple aesthetic changes at this point. Of course, we’re a long way from the actual 1.14 release so this might change. Still, it would be a let down in my opinion if no actual new Villagers joined the party!

* One major new feature will be Raids; Pillagers, a new aggro form of Villagers will attack Villages seeking to cause chaos and damage. The Pillagers sport a new form of ranged weapon, the Crossbow, and will attack passive Villagers at range. The player is encouraged to help defend the Villagers from these Raids.

* Pillagers will also be accompanied by a new mob, at the current time simply called the Illager Beast. This monstrous four legged creature like was described by Jeb as “really really tough, quite the challenge to take down”. Combined with the arrow firing Pillagers, the Raids seem like they will be quite destructive.

* Illager Beast is only a working name for now.now a thing. Jeb suggested he was open to input from the community on the final name.

* Illagers vs Pillagers vs Villagers. No mention was made to the previous Illagers introduced into the game. It all seems a bit confusing: Villagers, Illagers, Pillagers. Hopefully they’ll pick just one name for the evil variant.

* Players will also be able to craft the new Crossbow weapon. This new ranged weapon was mentioned as being really powerful, more so than the regular bow. In addition to delivering more damage, the range of the weapon is further than that of the bow. This is balanced by the Crossbow taking more time to load.

* There will be additional new enchantments coming for the Crossbow. These weren’t confirmed exactly but hinted to in the video and discussion. They seem to include a fast loading enchantment and something that looked like a splash effect for hitting multiple target. Agnes confirmed at least one more existed too.

* The Taiga Biome won the player vote for the next Biome update. That should mean we also see Fresh Berries, Campfires and Foxes added to the game as well. That said, it wasn’t confirmed exactly when this Biome would be updated, or indeed when the others would come either.

The official release of Minecraft 1.14 mentioned by Jeb was early 2019. I wouldn’t go ahead and stick any pins in your calendar though, expect that to be a pretty fluid target. From past experience early 2019 could mean anything from January -> July.

Coming before 1.14 though will be a minor update adding a few more items to the game. No word on the version number of name, but for now this looks like a possible 1.13.2 release. This is expected to come before the 2018 holidays according to Jeb; though he didn’t specify which holidays, I assume Christmas is what was intended.

In this interim release players will find the following new features:

* Cats will be introduced as a new passive mob, additional to existing Ocelots. Cats will come in nine different variants (get it?!) and will scare away Phantoms. Eight Cat designs are already in place with a ninth intended to come from the community. Expect more information to follow, but one lucky player will see their own real life cat immortalized in the Minecraft universe for all time.

* Scaffolding will be added to make large scale builds in Survival mode easier. This means you’ll no longer have to throw up tedious pillars and staircases of dirt blocks in order to tackle those really big builds. Scaffolding will be quick to put up and affected by gravity; when the build is complete, the scaffolding can be torn down quickly with ease.

* Scaffolding will be made from the new Bamboo item. Agnes described Bamboo as growing in Bamboo Forests and the video seemed to suggest these will be found within the Jungle Biome.

* Which is where you will also find the new passive mob, the Panda. Panda’s also consume the Bamboo and Agnes indicated they’ll come with a variety of traits such as lazy, aggressive or playful with rare variants discoverable too.

Here’s a small recap video of some of the items, see if you can spot any other details hidden in the video. For example, that sure does look like a sandstone wall block in the new Desert Village:

2 COMMENTS

There’s no official date yet except “early 2019”. Bedrock users will get the holiday update of pandas and bamboo and scaffolding in late 2018 though. I wouldn’t expect to see the Village And Pillage update at least until February-March 2019, if not longer.